New Moon: Surveying alchemical symbols

It's Friday, and I am simultaneously in recovery from last weekend's travels (beautiful, but overwhelming) and coping with some deep frustration around infertility bureaucracy (which I will not start griping about). Therefore, I suspect it's a helpful coincidence that today's missive should come together in a rather straightforward, easily organized way.

What I've had in mind is part of my slow-going project to better acquaint myself with alchemy and related aspects of the "Western" esoteric tradition or ceremonial magic. Where alchemy itself is concerned, it's influenced me and emerged in my practices for a while, but only in very loose or indirect ways. I know the basic steps of the Magnum Opus and I find it a potent narrative within the dark half of the year, as well as for grief; I recognize the interplay between alchemy and material science, embracing their historical oneness and reveling in food chemistry's implications for kitchen witchcraft; and I use certain alchemical symbols as shorthand or for ritual purposes, just as a great many modern occultists and armchair astrologers still do. And as I don't mean to realign my existing practices purely toward this flavor of ritual, at times what I know is already enough. But in other ways it isn't nearly enough, because alchemy is one of the chief means by which esotericism has preserved intuitive, traditional knowledge rejected by rational capitalism. If I seek to bring the past forward then this is one of the best links available, moreso than what most pagan reconstructionists claim to be doing.

Some of my efforts to better engage with alchemy come down to just reading things I've never read before. But at some point it also occurred to me I should sit down and make something like an outline of the alchemical symbols I'm currently familiar with. In creating such a glossary and contrasting it with the symbols I don't yet know, I might discover where some of my broader alchemical knowledge gaps lie; and in crystallizing my own interpretation of what I do know (or feel as if I know), I might build confidence in my ability to venture forward. And I am publishing this symbology where anyone can see, not to teach — I am not qualified — but to invite commentary from whoever might want to enrich my perspective with their own. Symbols being symbols, they hold whatever meaning we want or need them to hold, so I would like to equally develop my unique understanding and absorb others' consensus.

Astro-overlap

The first class of alchemical symbols I recognize are also astrological and astronomical. Astrolomical. They represent the classical planets, i.e. the "wandering" celestial objects that do not need to be seen with a modern telescope, although I have also included some of the symbols created after newer planetary discoveries, likewise symbols preserved for what modern astrologers count as "a planet" even though scientifically the object does not qualify. And of course there are then the zodiac constellations.

While these planets and constellations have their own significance for astrological divination, I know their symbols are used within alchemy for describing a host of abstractly related but functionally distinct concepts. Those concepts are what I do not yet feel very grounded in. I will write down various associations I can think of, though.

☉︎ - The Sun. Governs selfhood, ego, life force, and the constellation Leo. Its alchemical metal is gold, the supreme metal.

☽︎ - The Moon. Governs emotion, intuition, memory, and the constellation Cancer. The alchemical metal is silver, both mystically powerful and known for physical (albeit sometimes misapplied) disinfectant properties.

☿ - Mercury. Governs communication, exchange, reasoning, and the constellations Gemini and Virgo. The alchemical metal is, well, mercury — known in past centuries as quicksilver or hydrargyrum ("water silver"). There is more about mercury that belongs in another section.

♀ - Venus. Governs love, beauty, harmony, and the constellations Taurus and Libra. The alchemical metal is copper, once used as the most common choice for tools but notably for mirrors (no accident that the symbol itself is of Venus/Aphrodite's own mirror).

♂ - Mars. Governs strength, willpower, violence, and the constellation Aries[1]. The alchemical metal is iron, preternaturally powerful like silver but also copper's successor for weapons.

♃ - Jupiter. Governs growth, fortune, healing, and the constellation Sagittarius[2]. The alchemical metal is tin, alloyed with copper to produce bronze, and thus also of ancient value.

♄ - Saturn. Governs restraint, foresight, rationing, and the constellation Capricorn[3]. The alchemical metal is lead, regarded as common and often deadly but nonetheless often a useful necessity.

⛢ or ♅ - Uranus (the latter symbol being what I'm more familiar with, but rather colonially employing an H for the planet's modern discoverer Herschel, so having recently discovered the alternative I will try to favor it in the future). Governs radical disruption, ingenuity, revolution, and the constellation Aquarius. For modern alchemy the planet seems to sometimes represent the metal platinum.

♆ - Neptune. Governs dreams, imagination, the subconscious, and the constellation Pisces. For modern alchemy I am not clear what metal is associated although the trident symbol itself historically has represented bismuth.

♇ - Pluto (for which there is also an interesting alternative symbol but I don't believe it will display for most browsers without simply using an image file). Governs death, sex, regeneration, and the constellation Scorpio. I think there is no metal assigned to it in modern alchemy.

(A complex bonus) 🜨 or ♁ - Competing symbols for the Earth, which I am conflicted about because I think of the former symbol as more of a simplified solar wheel and I think of the latter as the "globus cruciger" (a Christian-derived concept of the cross ruling the world). But each of these symbols also alchemically represent metals, respectively verdigris[4] and antimony.

♈︎♉︎♊︎♋︎♌︎♍︎♎︎♏︎♐︎♑︎♒︎♓︎ - The symbols for the 12 classical zodiac constellations. They represent no metals in alchemy, but rather 12 sub-steps of the Magnum Opus, listed typically as calcination, congelation, fixation, solution, digestion, distillation, sublimation, separation, ceration, fermentation, multiplication, and projection. Because of this association, I am curious how I might engage with the Magnum Opus throughout an entire 12 month year and not just during the four ritual seasons (that is, six months) of the year's dark half.

The elements

I think these symbols are sometimes decently well-known among non-alchemists because they are quite simple. I forget where I first learned them. But as I work with the four elements very frequently in my rites, this has long since driven the symbols home.

🜂 - Fire, upward rising. Initiative, volition, passion. Plasma.

🜃 - Earth, what we stand upon. Stability, tangibility, wealth (in all senses). Solids.

🜁 - Air, what we stand beneath. Thought, abstraction, ideas. Gases.

🜄 - Water, downward flowing. Emotion, adaptability, relation. Liquids.

Note that because of the astrological material earlier, I am listing the elements in the order that they cycle through the zodiac signs. However, I could just have easily listed them as Air, Fire, Water, Earth because of how (as in a number of traditions) I ritually map those elements to the cardinal compass points, going clockwise from the east.

That list order is also what flows for me through each half of the Wheel of the Year, with the equinoxes being air as the winds of transition blow, followed by a fire day as protective flames are kindled (Calan Gaeaf/Samhain and Calan Mai/Beltane), the solstices being water as we hope for nourishing snow or rain, and ending with earth days as seeds are sown or the harvest is reaped (Gŵyl Fair/Imbolc and Calan Awst/Lughnasadh).

The primes

I have introduced myself to the tria prima, the three primes, much more recently. This is a different way of looking at the fundamentals of nature than the four elements, developed as far as I can tell by Paracelsus but probably also by thinkers who preceded him.

The three substances here do not work so well for me when thinking of them as "building blocks of matter," but they are actually about processes.

🜍 - Sulfur (brimstone). Regarded as combustible. Of course, physical sulfur is not the most flammable substance found in the universe, but it certainly is flammable enough to be treated with caution, and when it burns it produces highly toxic fumes. And because sulfur is frequently found in a volcanic context, there is no doubt in my mind why deep-time ancestors would have associated the smell of sulfur with fire on a primordial level.

☿ - Mercury (quicksilver). Here it returns! Regarded as volatile and fusible, in other words easily vaporized and easily melted together. I do find this a strange alchemical association because while physical mercury is indeed notable for being a liquid at room temperature, which few other chemical elements are, it does not easily boil to a gas or freeze to a solid; it would need to be heated above 674.11ºF (356.73ºC) or cooled below -37.89ºF (-38.83ºC). However, the sheer uniqueness of a "naturally" liquid metal makes it a meaningful stand-in for all things mutable — adapting to stimuli instead of simply exploding.

🜔 - Salt. Regarded as non-combustible and non-volatile. This negative distinction is what made me understand the point of these three primes. Salts in the modern chemical sense (not restricted to edible salt) are sometimes not very stable, but the process of forming a salt often involves combining two far less stable elements; I think of how sodium and chlorine on their own are quite dangerous, but when made into sodium chloride we have something no longer flammable or noxious.

Thus, the three primes rely on imperfect metaphors, but I understand them as representing verbs, not nouns. Sulfur suggests a reactive process so strong that the result is destruction; salt suggests a reactive process so mild that the result is neutralization; mercury suggests something in between, transformation without disappearance.

Other symbols

I know two more alchemical symbols that don't fall into any of the above categories.

🜏 - Black sulfur, i.e. sublimated sulfur remnants. This has become widely associated with the Church of Satan and by extension to any kind of satanism. While I have my severe disagreements with Anton LaVey and his followers, to the point where I avoid using the symbol too prominently lest I be mistaken for "CoS," I admit it's a clever association: a cross of sorts, but far from Christian, and the brimstone calls to mind Hell. But for satanic purposes I am more keen on inverted crosses, inverted pentagrams, and demonic sigils. And alchemically, I am not very clear on what black sulfur was used for in the past.

🜊 - Acid. This symbol is often combined with other symbols to represent the various types of acids that would have been known at alchemy's height. I learned it because — if I may take a very brief pop culture detour — at one point I watched the Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat culinary miniseries and found myself strongly agreeing with the host's breakdown of all kitchen witchcraft (though she doesn't use the term) into applications of those four items. So I then felt compelled to draw something for myself with the alchemical symbols for salt, fat, acid, and fire. It's difficult to represent the fat symbol in text form because it isn't found in Unicode, but I took a symbol I could find for fatty acid and removed the 🜊, leaving only what looks like ⚭︎ but turned 90 degrees.

This is where my personally adopted alchemical symbols peter out. I think altogether I understand some basics, but with non-planetary metals I'm fairly lost, and for substances beyond the metals I'm even more lost. Nor would I know how to interpret a list of alchemical instructions. And I would like to. I have no business making the philosopher's stone in a direct material sense, as nuclear transmutation can indeed create gold from other elements only at great economic expense and the existential cost of playing with nuclear physics; however, I am interested in how alchemical principles might be applied philosophically beyond "mere" metallurgy.

With that, I conclude my listing. And I find that indeed, I mostly know enough to know how much I don't know, but I believe that is an important threshold to cross.

[1] Historically also Scorpio.

[2] Historically also Pisces.

[3] Historically also Aquarius.

[4] The copper salts of acetic acid that form a green-blue-grey patina on copper or bronze.

Thank you for reading, but thank you especially if you have any feedback — corrections, points of comparison from your practices, anything. Next week there will be a post for paid subscribers with some springtime hedgecraft, and after that I will have a public piece regarding my lifelong relation to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a fertility myth and as a work of art.